Frame Dragging Around a Rotating Black Hole

(Credit: J. Bergeron/Sky & Telescope)

Gravity can do more than floor you. According to recent measurements of
a star system thought to contain a black hole, it can spin you too. This
effect, called frame-dragging, is most prominent near massive, fast
spinning objects. Now, a team led by W. Cui (MIT) has used the orbiting
Rossi X-ray Timing
Explorer to search for it near a system thought to contain a black hole.
Cui's team claim that matter in this system gets caught up and spun
around the black hole at
just the rate expected from frame-dragging. Such discoveries help
scientists better understand gravity itself.